Pages

Friday, August 29, 2014

Dwimmermount has arrived! (Review) - UPDATED

Its finally here.

In April 2014 the Dwimmermount Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded to the tune of $48,756 with an initial goal of $10,000. I am not going to get into all the drama that followed but it has taken several years for the final product to arrive, and boy it's a beauty. Autarch did a fantastic job putting this together. There are two versions available; Labyrinth Lord and Adventurer Conqueror King. The version I have and am reviewing today is for LL.

This is a BIG, MEATY book, it's 408 pages of deep, dark adventure. I have not had a chance to read all the way though this beast yet, its going to take some time. I recieved three books; the adventure book, an illustration book and map book.

Dwimmermount on the left, Dungeoneer's Survival Guide on the right, River the cat in the background.

Lets get started with the Map Book. This includes a wilderness map of the area surrounding Dwimmermount, the town of Muntburg and two page maps of all of the Dwimmermount levels. Also included are the dungeon era illustrations and a four page side view of the entire dungeon. Its all in black and white and is perfect bound. The maps are big and easy to read, overall a very usable book.

Nice big maps.

Next up is the Illustration book. This book is half the size of the map book, so roughly 8.5"x5.5". It has a very nice color illustration on the cover that is printed on a very interesting material, it almost feels like a velour but is a paper. I find that I keep rubbing the material, its very nice. Inside are 44 black and while illustrations from various locations around the dungeon. The likes of Jeff Dee, Steve Zieser and Erol Otus grace the pages, its a really nice book but I find myself wanting it to be a full sized 8.5"x11" booklet, the pictures are just to small for my liking.

Love that cover!

The illustrations are fantastic but should have been bigger!

Last but certainly not least is the main adventure book itself. It starts with a very extensive table of contents and then its into the good stuff. Chapter One covers the area around Dwimmermount. Chapter Two covers the history of the dungeon. Chapter Three is all about adventuring in the dungeon, everything from common knowledge of the dungeon to rumors and adventure seeds. The following chapters cover the town of Muntburg which serves as the home town for adventures into Dwimmermount. The Factions get a chapter and then its into the individual levels, one chapter each for a total of thirteen.

Following the levels are the appendices, all 91 pages of them! They cover new magic items, new spells, new monsters, rival parties, the four worlds, Azoth and the secrets of the Turms Termax. There's some really good stuff in here, lots of fun spells and monsters to throw at your players to keep them on their toes.

I'm really looking forward to digging further into this book, it looks fantastic and varied enough to keep things fresh. Unfortunately my issue with this adventure is the same I have with all mega-dungeons, I will never have the time to run this all the way through from start to finish. One-shots are how I have to roll, my gaming time is limited these days so something we can start and finish in one or two evenings is best. I'm sure I could use bits and pieces of this for smaller adventures, it may be the only way I get to use it!

Lots o' adventure!

If you have an itch for an epic mega-adventure, Dwimmermount will not steer you wrong. It's a lot of material and is a steal at $10 on RPGnow.com for the .pdf.

Five beer steins out of five!

UPDATE 08/31/2014: I received an email from the Kickstarter campaign today, it stated that the Wilderness Map and Dungeon Tracker are also complete and shipping, I will update the review once those two items have arrived!